e-Government seeks feedback

Dubai e-Government Department has enlarged its presence at Gitex in order to play host to its sister departments. Visitors to its stand in hall 6 will be able to drop by and see how far the 30 or so government agencies have progressed in developing online services.

Dubai e-Government Department has enlarged its presence at Gitex in order to play host to its sister departments. Visitors to its stand in hall 6 will be able to drop by and see how far the 30 or so government agencies have progressed in developing online services.

The biggest achievement for the e-government team in the last 12 months has been the migration by many departments to its central e-government infrastructure.

When work began on the Emirates' e-government initiative nearly two and a half years ago, most of the departments started developing services in isolation of one another, resulting in a collection of standalone services.

However, the migration to a central e-government infrastructure and use of a single content management system has helped to integrate and standardise services through a single portal - dubai.ae.

"By Gitex we're going to have about 20 departments using our CMS [content management system] rather than having their own," predicts Salem Al Shair, director of e-services, Dubai e-Government Department. "Their content will be hosted with us on our infrastructure. [Previously] many of them hosted their own servers in their own departments. Consolidation is going to move forward quickly," he adds.

Although government agencies are gradually moving to the portal, Dubai e-Government Department still has to address marketing and awareness issues to increase traffic. Currently, although many services are available online through the portal, the various different departments spend time marketing their own web sites - not the central portal.

"We are going to concentrate on marketing and awareness," says Al Shair. "Once we have more people using the services and more people communicating with us, then we can use their feedback on our services. Feedback is vital for us to improve the quality of the services," he adds.